


muscle memory

by summerpassingby



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: M/M, because making them hold onto each other is what i deserve, snowstorms winter hot chocolate etc, they go on a date-ish skating, this one's just for me but a little bit magical weather because it's my fave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:27:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29236050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerpassingby/pseuds/summerpassingby
Summary: Richie and Eddie go skating in 1990 and in 2017, and end up where they were always meant to be.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	muscle memory

As usual, Richie Tozier is ringing Eddie’s doorbell. Eddie can tell because he always rings three times, and Mrs. Kaspbrak always sighs after he does.

This time, as with most times lately, Eddie is too busy bounding down the stairs to hear how pointed it is. Winter break means Eddie spends most of his time inside—so even when he opens the door to Richie winding his arm back to lob a snowball at him, Eddie laughs as he yells

“Don’t fucking do it, Rich!”

and presses his lips together to stop himself from smiling more as he packs together one of his own, bare hands not yet realizing the cold.

(He throws it, and misses on purpose.)

(Richie misses too, but Eddie doesn’t have much faith that he does it intentionally.)

Richie grins. “Whatcha up to, Eds?”

“Not much.” Eddie’s a little out-of-breath, although he’s not sure what from. “Want to come skating?”

He doesn’t know why he says it. Usually they end up making hot chocolate at Richie’s, watching whatever’s on at the Aladdin, or tobogganing if the weather’s right—but the sky is clear today, and Richie’s breath fogging up his glasses makes Eddie think: _today is a perfect day for skating_.

“Sure.” Richie shrugs underneath his parka, his shoulders nearly touching the blue hat he always wears pulled down too far over his ears. Eddie’s heart tumbles. Richie’s smile is so big.

Eddie’s head rushes as he tugs on his coat over his mittens, stealing glances back at a still-smiling Richie waiting in the doorframe.

 _Today’s the day_ , he tells himself. He doesn’t think to question what for. It doesn’t much matter to him, already too endeared (albeit in a far-away, hidden place of himself) to mind.

Richie knocks shoulders with him as they walk away from the skate rental counter at Bassey Park. “Is now a good time to tell you I don’t know how to skate?”

Eddie snorts. “No way you never learned how.”

Yes way, it turns out, when Richie steps onto the ice and immediately slips.

Eddie furrows his eyebrows. Richie’ll bruise his tailbone like that. “You okay?”

“Never been better, Spaghetti.” For his part, Eddie doesn’t see anything less than genuine excitement on Richie’s face.

Richie lifts a hand up. “Help me up?”

Eddie takes it, heart suddenly pounding.

Richie stands, the arm not attached to Eddie swinging back and forth. The hand that is holds firmly onto Eddie’s, and Eddie wishes for one wistful second that it was summertime: there would be no gloves to separate them.

Eddie’s hand burns. Richie quiets. And, even if for only the minute he needs to steady himself, he doesn’t let go.

This is why, when twenty-six years later Richie says what he always does ( _I’m bored, Eds, let’s do something_ ), Eddie says in a tone more mild-mannered than himself: _let’s go skating_.

He hasn’t been skating since. He isn’t sure he’ll remember how. He isn’t the person he was ten months ago, let alone as a teenager—can you even keep muscle memory that long?

“Going to take me to Central Park?” Richie bats his eyelids. “Like a real New Yorker.”

“ _Real_ New Yorkers know Central Park is for tourists. We’re walking to the rink.”

Richie scrunches his nose at him as Eddie locks the door and they start down the stairs. “So I guess no New Year’s ball drop then, either.”

“Still waiting for _your_ balls to drop before I take you.”

Richie shakes his head, smiling. “Hurts, Eds.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows, then grins. “I can’t believe you’re finally here.”

“Me neither. Although I was hoping your guest room wouldn’t also be your living room, and your kitchen.”

Eddie elbows him. “Hey. Could’ve been worse. You know, actually having to pay for somewhere to stay?”

Richie laughs him off. “Yeah, yeah. Doing the big-time unemployed comedian a favour, I get it. Mr. Good Samaritan.”

“You’re not the worst company, Rich.” Eddie locks eyes with him. “Really.”

Richie’s cheeks, unless Eddie is imagining it, go a little pink. “I’ll take it.”

“How is unemployment treating you?”

Eddie, more than he would ever admit, is itching to know. When Eddie asked Richie to fly out from L.A. for a visit, Richie had said, innocuously: _Sure, I just have to do a couple things before I book my flight._ _A couple things_ , it turned out, meant coming out in the middle of a stand-up routine and promptly walking off to fire his agent before texting the Losers the same news.

It trended on Twitter (another thing Eddie will never admit that he knows). Probably the most exposure Richie’s career has ever gotten, although certainly not the kindest. Some of it is justified; some of it Eddie has had to stop himself from starting online arguments about—

Richie grimaces. “About as well as you can expect. But things will work out.”

Eddie envies the surety he says it with. “I hope so.”

“They will,” Richie says again, and suddenly, remarkably, Eddie believes him entirely. “You know, for what it’s worth, I’d do it again.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t you?”

Here it is, the other semi-elephant in the room – Eddie’s divorce, and his own, decidedly less theatrical coming-out text: _Hey guys. Myra and I are separating. I’m gay. Ben, I saw your new building on East 76 th. Looks good. Eddie._

Eddie considers it. The divorce has been expectedly amicable: Myra gets the house in Bay Ridge, Eddie moves into a shitty studio in Bensonhurst until he finds a new place, and they meet for coffee and a walk once a week. They’re better off as friends, but Eddie does miss not being able to see his kitchen from his bed.

“I guess so, yeah. Marty took it really well, at least.”

“That’s good, Eds. That’s really good.”

Richie’s words hang in the air. Eddie doesn’t know what to say back. He isn’t sure why, actually. It’s like one of those games – you say _Never have I ever, fought a clown haunting my hometown twice, realized I was gay when I met back up with my childhood friends to do it the second time, then started a new life because of it_ , and the last thing you expect is for someone else to put their finger down. But Richie knows, almost exactly, what it’s like. So why haven’t they talked about it?

When Eddie picked Richie up from the airport, he didn’t mention it at all. _How was your flight, the reason airplane food is bad is because of the altitude and dry air; it’s not the flight attendants’ fault, yes I have an apartment now_ , but… he didn’t want to burst the bubble.

The bubble of: _Never have I ever, fought a clown haunting my hometown twice, realized I was gay when I met back up with my childhood friends to do it the second time, then started a new life because of it, and had a big fat crush on my best friend for what is in retrospect, literally thirty years. And wondered if he could like me back_.

It’s not like that would be so out of left field, would it?

Would it?

They’re here. Skate rentals are $2.50 an hour. Richie pays.

“I’m hoping this gives me some extra karma, ‘cause I still don’t know how to skate,” he says.

“Dude, really? Still?” Eddie doesn’t mind.

“You think it’s cute.”

Richie’s tone is dry, but Eddie still turns red. “No I don’t.”

“Ah, Eds, you’re wrong. But you are still going to have to help me onto the ice.”

Eddie steps out onto the ice. It takes him a second to find his footing, but he hasn’t forgotten after all. He skates back to Richie and holds his hands out, bracing his arms as Richie pushes down on them to steady himself.

“Okay,” Richie says. “All set.”

Eddie lets go, and pushes off.

Richie lets go, and doesn’t move.

Eddie realizes with a start that he still pushes his hats down too far below his ears. It makes his stomach ache.

Richie’s feet slip out behind him, one after the other.

“You’re supposed to glide, not walk,” he calls out.

“Dude, I’m forty-two, and I can’t afford health insurance anymore. I gotta take it easy.”

Eddie skates back to him. “You’ll hurt your back that way. Here.”

He holds his palms up for Richie to grab.

His stomach aches again.

“Woah. I’ve got you,” he says. “Okay, now push out and back on your right.”

Richie does, slowly, and Eddie, facing backwards, pushes off in tandem. They move unsteadily forward, Eddie trying to remember how to properly skate backwards. Make tracks on the ice like a Coke bottle, right? Or was he supposed to put more weight on one foot?

It’s funny, his memories of learning to skate. Long-faded, they feel like every other from his childhood did before Mike’s call. He doesn’t know how he stood it.

“What is it?” Richie says. They’re gliding more smoothly now.

Eddie shakes his head. “It’s stupid. I just don’t know how I never remembered you guys.”

“I think maybe we did still, but it’s more like this.” Richie gestures his hand again, and Eddie’s along with it. “Muscle memory.”

Eddie grips Richie’s hands tighter.

“Like, I used to start dialling the pay phone in my sleep in my college dorm,” Richie continues. “Never had any money for it, but you know whose number it was? When Mikey called me I threw up realizing. It was yours.”

“Rich…” Eddie says. They round the corner back to the start of the rink now.

Richie fills the silence. “This guy Will I did stand-up with when I was just starting out, too! Called him Big Bill out of nowhere. Tiny guy. Didn’t go over well. You know how you guys get.”

Eddie bites his lip to stop himself from saying _5’8 is very close to average and you are just weirdly tall, thank you very much_.

“I mean, It tried as hard as It could, but… I don’t think any of you guys ever really left me.”

Richie still hasn’t let go.

“I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t want to have been alone, man. But I think you still had all of this in you. You just needed to go skating again, you know? Also you have a lower centre of gravity, so you—”

Eddie lets him have it. He glances behind them to maneuver around a skater pushing a chair.

Muscle memory. That’s the most sense anyone’s managed to make of it yet. He’s had them, too. Quirks he’s laughed off, said _don’t know where that one came from_ after putting the wrong address on an envelope addressed to a client—always getting to the DER in DERRY, MAINE, U.S.A. 04401 before scratching it out. Times he’s gone for a run, thought _I’ll stop by Richie’s on my way home_ , even though he doesn’t know anyone by that name.

“Jesus,” he says out loud. “Jesus. I thought of you too, Rich. All of you.”

“You did?”

For the second he says it, Eddie’s heart feels close to breaking. _Today’s the day,_ he thinks.

“All the time,” Eddie says. “I thought of you all the time.”

Richie’s glasses fog up when they walk inside, skates still on, to buy hot chocolate from the little café inside the clubhouse next to the rink. He taps the rubber mats lining the floor with his skate. “Now _this_ —much more my speed.”

Eddie presses his lips together to hold in his smile. “I’ll get you skating circles around me in no time, Rich.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Eddie knocks against Richie’s shoulder. “I know it.”

He doesn’t move away from Richie afterwards.

A blizzard’s starting outside. The walk back will feel longer. It doesn’t matter. They have all the time in the world, and home waits for them.

(On the way there Eddie throws a snowball at him (and misses, on purpose)).

**Author's Note:**

> @astudyinsubtext on tumblr if you would like to say hi! this one's based on a rink i used to go to a lot as a kid so uhhh shoutout to the mini pizzas and hot chocolate from it


End file.
